The Other Border Crisis

'The armadillos have breached the outer wall...'

Photo by Suzanne D. Williams on Unsplash

I know the border is on everyone’s mind, so I thought I’d point out that I’m having a personal border crisis. Which is that armadillos have crossed the border of South Carolina (I mean, the weather is nice so who can blame them?). Worse, they have also crossed the border of our property. I knew they were here. My son saw an entire herd of them in the forest once, and showed me a video documenting it.

These days my entire yard is looking more like a field being slowly excavated by small to medium sized Tonka trucks. There are holes and divots everywhere. A couple of years I go I thought these tiny trenches were being dug by moles. Moles! Or perhaps small wild hogs. (It’s a thing.) When in fact it was actually living, breathing, mobile Tonka trucks with long claws. And sometimes with leprosy. (A peculiar biological fact.)

I wasn’t aware of the another issue. My lovely wife pointed it out with all the equanimity of a woman trapped in a log house being slowly overrun by nature. She pointed to the lowered window. ‘You can hear them, you know. The Armadillos.’ There was a kind of hopeless resignation in her voice. The kind you get in disaster or horror movies. ‘They’re coming and there’s nothing we can do about it.’ She was correct. They make faint squeaky noises. It sounded like a LOT of armadillos. I held her close and closed the window. ‘Shhh, it’s going to be OK.’

We have dogs. Well, sort of dogs. We used to have a large pack of dogs because, obviously, each child wanted his or her own dog, and so did Jan and I. For a while we moved between five and six dogs who lived their entire lives outside on the porch and in the woods. They were an assortment of breads, from mixed beagle-shepherds to hound-shetlands and at least one Dane-bear. It’s really hard to know what unholy unions produced our mongrels. But they were a force to reckon with.

They patrolled the property constantly. Large to small they moved in a tactical formation that was both elegant and chaotic, and somewhere between a wolf-pack and a band of drunken vikings. Nothing dared show its nose in our hallowed yard or property. I saw many a creature, large and small, tuck its tail and run hell-bent-for-leather to points distant, with dogs of various sizes, speeds (and intelligence) in hot pursuit. Heck, one of them almost devoured my father-in-law when he dared show up in the yard on Halloween, dressed like the grim-reaper, and attempted to approach the children on their trampoline.

Sometimes they went on raids and engaged in assorted dogbauchery at other houses. I would go to work in the morning and see them trudging home, five to six in a row, down our country road. Hang-dog indeed. (If they had been wearing sequined dresses and carrying their stilletos it would have looked like the aftermath of a home game at my alma mater, WVU.)

Over the years our amazing pack of furry body-guards surrendered to canine mortality. Some to cancer, some to age, a couple simply wandering off into the woods and falling asleep for one last time (I still don’t know where they went).

These days we have two new dogs. They are companions, who belong to my wife Jan and our son Seth. (Zelda and Apollo respectively.) They are adorable, entertaining creatures. They have pillows to sleep on. They have toys. (The old dogs just played with rancid racoon carcasses….dogs these days.)

These dogs will chase the occasional deer to the edge of the woods, and sometimes follow another dog a bit further. But when the sun is down, they’re ready for hugs, rubs and nighty-night. No nocturnal forays for them. Apparently, they know what’s in the woods and just aren’t interested.

I asked them (as I speak a little dog). ‘What’s up the with the armadillos? Are you guys doing anything about that?’

Zelda: ‘Oh, yeah, they’re super nice! We hang out!’

Apollo: ‘Do about them? They’re oppossums with armor. You’re the higher primate…you do something. Can I have some bologna?’

Times have changed. Back in the day the old dogs would have been stacking armadillo bodies just to send a message.

So what do we do? Jan found an article that said we needed cayenne pepper and castor oil. I didn’t read the entire thing, so I wonder, what does one do?

I mean, I can’t give a cat a pill without needing a tetanus shot. Am I supposed to cuddle the armadillos and use a dropper to put the poison down their throats? If so, will they just like the flavor and have more regular bowel movements? And just how much castor oil and pepper will I need, because I feel like it’s a lot.

Do they dislike food prepared with these items? I mean, maybe we make castor oil, pepper pancakes and leave them out with a nice garnish of rat poison.

Do I spread it around all of the hundreds of little holes in the ground? Or will this only attract more small creatures with odd culinary predilections?

I used to work in a hospital that had bears on the property. One year they sent out an announcement that they had put out a no-kill trap and had baited it with sardines and honeybuns. I was thinking, ‘add a Dr. Pepper and you’ll catch a stray deer hunter!’

Many years ago my friend and partner Jack informed us that his fishing lake was beset with beavers. ‘I’m thinking of building a raft, putting dynamite on it and then covering it with corn for the beavers.’ Well God bless him, that’s how a Southerner thinks! It would have been spectacular, I’ll grant, with burnt corn and beaver bits landing like Pharoah’s plagues on the frightened denizens of the county. ‘Margie, I just got hit in the head by a beaver tail!’ Forunately his wife Ellen and the rest of us convinced him it wasn’t a great idea. (No, it was an amazing idea!)

I feel as if I may be left with something like that. Maybe tannerite under a big container of castor oil and cayenne pepper.

(If you don’t know what tannerite, it’s one of the reasons some of us live in the sticks…see link below. God bless America.)

I suppose I could try shooting the wee Sherman tanks, but they’re mostly nocturnal and alas, I’m no longer as nocturnal as I used to be.

In a way, I feel as if they’ve already won. The only dead armadillos I see are whacked by large cars or trucks (which probably then need work done due to the not insignificant armor plating of said critters).

Jan and I have endured Asian Lady Beetles, centipedes, stink bugs, bats and wasps (and that’s just in our bedroom).

We’ve had coyotes, bears in the trash, wild hogs, rattlesnakes, copperheads and once a vast vulture pecked on our roof in what I can only assume was some premonition of death.

But it may be the armadillos that finally drive us to madness. Or retreat.

Do beach condos get armadillo infestations? It might be time to find out.

Until then, pass me that Castor Oil. If you can’t beat ‘em…